Mother renames son after tattooist makes spelling error

‘My heart stopped and I thought I was going to faint’

Johanna Sandstrom only realised the tattoo typo when she returned home (Johanna Sandstrom)

A devastated mother whose tattooist misspelt her son’s name came up with an ingenious, and painless, solution – she renamed her child.

Johanna Giselhall Sandstrom asked a local tattoo artist in Kyrkhult, Sweden, to have the names of her two offspring inked onto her arm.

It was only when Ms Sandstrom returned home that she noticed her son Kevin had become “Kelvin”, despite the fact she was given the chance to review the design beforehand.

“I said I wanted the names of my children tattooed on me and I gave the artist their names,” she told local newspaper Blekinge Lans Tidning. “The artist drew the design and didn’t ask anything about the spelling so I didn’t give it any more thought.”

But she broke down in tears once she realised the mistake.

“My heart stopped and I thought I was going to faint,” she said.

After returning to the tattoo parlour, the tattooist laughed and said there was nothing he could do beyond giving her a refund.

After discovering it would take multiple treatments to remove the tattoo, Ms Sandstrom and her husband opted to change their son’s name instead.

“I had never heard the name ‘Kelvin’ before,” she said. “There isn’t anyone who names their kid Kelvin. So when I thought more about it, I realised that no one else has this name. It became unique. Now we think it is better than Kevin.”

Ms Sandstrom said Kelvin “didn’t think about” the name change as he was only a two-year-old at the time, but promised to check “10,000 times” before she gets her next tattoo in honour of Freja, her third child.